


God

by Causa



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 09:51:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4133088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Causa/pseuds/Causa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Creation ex nihilio had fascinated Hannibal from a young age.</p>
            </blockquote>





	God

Creation ex nihilio had fascinated Hannibal from a young age.

Consider: time is infinite and energy available. It is only a matter of waiting, then, until matter shifted to into its every possible form. 

Some atheist he had met on a park bench in his twenties–who tied him up with cut strips of an old shirt and kissed him gently on their last night together before her leaving for Germany–had argued that that was the beauty of it: out of all the possible universes, all the possible planets, all the possible life, here we were, kings and queens of the beautiful mountains and streams and cerulean skies of Earth, privileged with the minds to unravel its workings and mysteries and our own. But Hannibal saw nothing savory about this way of thinking; why settle for the here and now if there were so many others? A world in which humans evolved to be taller, or lived on a planet closer to the sun, could be demonstrably better than this one. If every possibility existed, there was nothing satiating about the present, only an infinite string of questioning one’s existence, for if there was a limitless series of universes out there, there was one in which the woman in front of him looked at him with eyes not half-full with wariness but filled with warmth and trust. There was one in which, days earlier, his wife had not shed her dress with her back to him. There was one in which his fingers felt the soft, tousled curls of their visitor as his breath warmed Hannibal’s face and their lips touched–would that have felt better than the satisfaction of seeing their visitor’s shut eyes and cool, parted lips and his body stripped and flayed on the counter before him? Would the feel of Bedelia’s eyes, enraptured by their naked skin, be better than the low and ephemeral intrigue that flashed in her eyes as he raised their visitor’s body over his shoulder and took him to the kitchen table? 

If there were an infinite series of universes, then there was one in which the beautiful woman before him was not before him at all, one where Will was sitting in her chair with Abigail adjacent to him. And another where there was no chair and no table and no sprawling home in Italy, only his, where he was playing in the snow with the little girl he saw every night in his sleep. 

But if the universe wasn’t built on possibility, then reality meant so much more. This reality where honesty was obscured by fear and vulnerability by distrust, where the selfish flourished while the selfless starved, where children died daily while killers, betrayers, and liars roamed free and happy throughout, where action is made moot by the promise of salvation–the atheists, murderers, thieves, bigots, liars could live with the angels and saints and innocents so long as they exalted God properly before their deaths. What a fascinating being, He who desired so desperately the acknowledgement of the creations he neglected.

It was the psychologist in Hannibal who denied atheism; how anyone could pass up the chance to meet someone with such a sense of humor and such a sense of desperation, he didn’t know.


End file.
